KHL finals to be decided after game seven

Alessandro Seren Rosso – Staff writer

And after six, spectacular, hard fought and tight matches, we are at the last act of the first KHL finals. And interestingly enough, the Gagarin Cup will be awarded in the Cosmonaut Day, celebrated by Russians every April 12th as that was the day of Yuri Gagarin’s fly in the outer space. Just like I predicted in our precedent issue about the KHL, the series is arrived at the seventh match. This is a considerable result for Ak Bars Kazan: they were down not only after one game, but also after three and five. And in game six, they were down 2-1 in an away match with less than twenty minutes to go, just to rally and win in the overtime. And it was another OT win the one they got in the second match of the series. If it’s not enough, should you want to know that they play with only five defensemen for the whole series after the injury suffered by Alexei Emelin after a fight in the semifinals against former Blue Jacket Alexander Svitov. Oh, I was forgetting, goalkeeper Fredrik Norrena – twenty-two saves in game six – is playing with a broken finger.

But that’s a good result for Lokomotiv as well, even  though they had the hands on the cup after winning game 5 in Kazan and being up 2-1 in the third period in the sixth challenge. But they are in a risky position now, the momentum stays on Kazan’s side and they probably are upset. It must not be pleasant to lose the decisive game like that, at home.

Game seven, just like any other game seven in any league of the world, will be exciting and very hard to predict. In the article mentioned earlier, I said that Ak Bars had the edge. I haven’t changed idea, but in the playoffs you never know.

It might be an interesting thing having a good idea about how the fans react to such matches. On Russian hockey portal allhockey.ru there was a kind of confrontation on the matter, based off foto reportages. Here you can see Lokomotiv fans, while here you can find the same, but in Kazan. Who wins the fans’ battle? Let’s discuss it on the comments! By the way, my vote goes to Kazan in this too.

Posted by Alessandro Seren Rosso on Apr 11 2009. Filed under International Hockey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.